


the thought that moves you upward

by anthrop



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood, Gen, Ladystuck, Major Character Death in that we're talking about Kanaya here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You won’t survive this.<br/>Well alright, that’s a little dramatic. You <i>probably</i> won’t survive this. After all, you’re one troll versus a hunting party, and here you are running through the chalk-swept ruins of some dead god’s temple in a tattered gown without so much as a chainsaw handy. Not that it would have done you any good. You’re a troll in human territory; you’re lucky to be allowed anywhere near a butter knife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the thought that moves you upward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [C Square (Emiko842)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emiko842/gifts).



> C Square, you requested an au where trolls are considered monsters and hunted by humans. This is... almost that fic? I was heavily inspired by your [clubstuck fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2211273) and so I sort of combined the two ideas together. Hopefully you like this! If not, well, I tried. 
> 
> Title comes from Interpol's [Evil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C5Eipt8xn0).

You won’t survive this.

Well alright, that’s a little dramatic. You _probably_ won’t survive this. After all, you’re one troll versus a hunting party, and here you are running through the chalk-swept ruins of some dead god’s temple in a tattered gown without so much as a chainsaw handy. Not that it would have done you any good. You’re a troll in human territory; you’re lucky to be allowed anywhere near a butter knife.

You hear a human shout--close. You bite a curse in half and pick up speed. Cold, old stone stings your bare feet, and oh you had _liked_ those shoes. You had liked--you had thought tonight would have been--you had verbed a lot of wishes tonight, and all that got you was here. Still, you’d saved up three months of earnings for those shoes. Maybe you’ll have a chance to circle back and grab them?

Yeah, and maybe an oinkbeast will fly overhead next. Your life is more important, and you might have only minutes left to appreciate the blood pounding in your auricular sponge clots and the cold winter air searing your pulmonary respiration sacks.

Another shout--closer. They’ve found you.

There’s a half dozen humans. They have knives and hatchets, and they bare their flat white teeth in hungry grins. You hold up your hands--empty, pleading. You’re just one troll. You’ve done nothing wrong. Please. You back up and away, stumbling backwards along a crumbling stone path. Please. Please.

They don’t listen. They don’t care.

Retreat, pursue. It’s an idle game of purrbeast and squeakbeast. They’re in no rush to kill you, out here in the cold dark temple grounds. There’s no where you can run where they won’t catch you, outnumbered and with nothing but your claws and horns for weapons, and your hooked horn is doomed to catch on an errant curve of bone. You’ll be lucky to kill even one, if they’ll let it come to that.

Mind the stairs.

“The what?” You ask, stupidly, the words slipping from you along a pale ribbon of breath. The humans stare, their white eyes bright and unsettling in the soft light of Prospit cresting the distant chalk dunes. None of them repeat the words spoken in a gently humoring tone, right inside your own thinkpan. There’s no such thing as a human psychic.

You take another step backwards, but this time your toes touch nothing at all. Gravity sweeps you up and pushes you down, a yelp slipping through your fangs. You throw your hands out to catch yourself but grab useless handfuls of pastel chalk instead. The ground swallows you up, and you fall.

You hit your nugbone once--

\--twice--

\--you hit your _horns_.

Stone is never kind, and it’s an awful long way down.

 

* * *

 

Consciousness sets all your muscles protesting. Everything _hurts_. That… that was not your best escape. But did you escape at all? The silence is worrying. Surely the humans hadn’t left you dead in some temple hole without taking--

Your palms slap keratin. Good. Thank goodness. Your horns are still firmly on your head, and only a little dinged from your fall down what is surely the longest and most pointless flight of stairs in existence. But why hadn’t the trollhunters followed after you, why hadn’t they collected their prizes from an unconscious troll? Had it only been a scare tactic? That wouldn’t make tonight the first time that’s happened to you, but normally humans aren’t quite so aggressive in their territorial displays….

Don’t move.

Very carefully, you ignore the voice. Nothing good ever comes to trolls that listen to the disembodied, regardless of whether it’s ghosts or psychic invaders. Instead you ease yourself into a sitting position, pain hissing through your fangs. The ground is very wet.

Can’t you hear me?

That’s better. You look around, squinting at a pale, flickering light without any clear source. You seem to have ended up in a human mausoleum.  There are fat stone slabs and the spicy dust-smell of preserved bodies, and the walls and even the floor are all richly carved with strange symbols.

You lean back against the wall behind you, idly tracing your claws along the edge of a stylized carving of a winged cat, trying to remember what god was housed here once upon a time. Is this a depiction of it, or simply one of it’s many faces? Human gods are so fickle. Human gods are often so hungry, too. Perhaps you’ve lucked out, and this one only eats its own worshipers. Then again, you’ve never put much stock in luck.

Perhaps you can’t understand me.

Under the long-dead smell, there is the sweet-sharp bite of copper. There are pools of blood gathered on all sides of you, the unsettling red turned to black by the strange light. At the foot of the stairs there are uneven lumps, glistening in the yellow moonlight.The humans had indeed followed you down here. There… there are only pieces of them left now.

“Dead,” you murmur, and this elicits a pleased noise from the voice in your head.

English! So you’re merely recalcitrant rather than idiotic.

“To assume I’m an idiot for not being fluent in Human English displays a poor understanding for the complexities of the language barrier,” you retort, and then bite your lip. So much for ignoring her--it. Ignoring it.

My apologies. I would never dare make assumptions of the mental faculties of any troll that has just fallen ass over teakettle into my ossuary.

“You’re what.”

My ossuary. The final resting place of my bones, and others besides.

“I know what it means!” You close your eyes to shut out the light. It’s giving you a headache. “Did you kill them?”

Those men? Yes.

“Oh.”

Don’t tell me they were friends of yours. I know relationships with at least one troll participant tend to be more aggressive as a whole, but from a human perspective hatchets seem a poor way of showing someone you care.

“They were poachers,” you say, unable to resist the rueful grin tugging at your mouth. “They were after my horns, and my blood too.”

Oh?

“I have jade blood. It’s very rare, and very valuable on the human black markets.”

The voice is silent for long enough that you nearly doze off, exhausted and too cold to even shiver. You twitch awake when it speaks at last.  Things have certainly changed while I’ve been stuck down here.

“Stuck?”

Never mind, it won’t matter in a moment or two. I’d forgotten how long it takes a troll to die.

A chill prickles its way down your skin. “What?”

Haven’t you ever watched Troll Indiana Jones? This temple belongs to great Echidna. You can consider me a particularly chatty booby trap.

“Uh.”

Surely you’ve noticed how much of all that blood is your own?

The pale light flickers like a racing pulse. You bring your hand to your face; this close, there’s no question of color. Your palm--your _arm_ \--is soaked in your blood. You look down, expecting to see all your organs spilled in your lap, but there’s just a _hole_ , a perfect circle of charred meat ringing thin air. There are no organs whole enough to spill anywhere.

You also happen to be glowing. Well. That explains the light, in any case.

Why are you laughing?

You ignore the voice and use the slab nearest you as leverage. Cold and stiff and woozy and not nearly as full of yourself as you were earlier tonight, that’s you all over. You stifle another shrill giggle behind your hand. _Literally_.

Seriously, you should stop moving. You’ll be dead in another couple of minutes.

“I already am,” you say.

What?

“You seem knowledgeable for a booby trap, Miss Voice In My Head. What do you know about jadeblooded trolls?”

...I know they’re nearly as rare as fuchsiabloods, and that they have an intimate role in the dealings of troll reproduction.

Your mouth thins. “Crude, but not inaccurate.”

I’m nearly recharged, by the way, so if you’d like a pleasant death I highly advise that you stop talking and lay down. I’m pointed at the stairs so I’ll miss. Probably.

“I’m already dead. Where are you?”

Already dead?

“Where are you?” you repeat.

I knew trolls had a rampant zombie problem but I didn’t think they could speak. Unless….

Let the voice figure it out on its own. You’re too tired to bother--no, not tired. _Hungry_. And here are all these corpses, still fresh enough to smell delicious.

What are you doing?

Oh.

Oh!

Well that certainly raises as many questions as it answers.

You sit back on your heels, delicately wiping your mouth with the back of your wrist. Already you feel better, so at least your old books weren’t wrong about that. The light you cast doesn’t sting your eyes as much. In fact, you can see much clearer now, and you think you’ve spied the booby trap’s concealment block.

“There is a square niche near the ceiling, opposite the stairs. I can see two thin, black shapes. Would that be you?”

Good eyes. Must be one of the perks of being a troll vampire.

“We troll vampires prefer the term ‘rainbow drinker.’”

You must be joking.

You pinch the mangled and bloodsoaked remains of your gown between your claws and hop nimbly atop the stone slab. You’re just tall enough to grab the sticks--no, _wands_. “Magic wands for defense of a dead god’s temple?” you ask.

She was a bit of a one-trick pony. Thanks, by the way. I’ve been stuck up there, oh, must be over thirteen years now.

“Why?”

I told you, to be a booby trap for Echidna’s temple. Now that you’ve removed me however, I am now no longer bound to kill every sap dumb enough to fall down here.

“I tripped.”

I warned you about the stairs. I told you.

You make a face, halfway tempted to put the stupid things right back where you found them. No good ever came of dealing with ancient weapons capable of great destruction, especially the ones that talk. Still, they might come in handy. If they’re halfway controllable, at least. “Let’s make a deal.”

Isn’t that my line? I’m the pair of sentient magic wands that blasted a hole clean through your torso. How are you standing with half your spine gone anyway? Lower me, I want a closer look at the damage I did.

“Please stop talking and listen,” you grit out.

Very well.

“You killed me and those humans, and that’s put me in a bad situation. The human laws in Lolar dictate that if a troll makes an attempt to injure a human, even in self-defense, that troll must face the human gallows. I don’t know how well my newly undead throatstem can resist the noose’s cinch, but I’m sure either way the human law enforcers will find a way to kill me a second time.”

Why do you preface everything with ‘human?’ That seems like it would get exhausting awfully quick.

“Hush. What I mean to say is that now even if I flee for my life, or unlife I guess, these humans are still dead and there is a very good chance some other humans know what they were after. My absence would only damn me further.”

Then why not stay?

“Impossible,” you scoff. “Look at me.”

Well the hole would be a dead giveaway. Or undead, in this case. That can be covered up easily enough, however. Can you do anything about the light?

“No,” you say, because you honestly have no idea. Your old books never went into the useful details.

Here, allow me.

_Blackness_ streams from the tips of the wands clenched in your white hand, ribbons of icy cold that drag a gasp out of you like it means to keep you from ever breathing again. It twines about you, smothering and as cold and wet as a midwinter tide, twisting with an intent you can only call hungry, sinks into your _skin_ and squeezes until you’re certain your bones will _break_ \--

There. That’s better.

You’re on your hands and knees, crimson and jade blood soaking you further. The wands have somehow landed on a flagstone free of gore. Carefully, very carefully, you try to breathe. Your chitinous windhole is raw, like you’ve been screaming for hours. “ _Never_ \--” you cough, a ragged and unpleasant sound. “Never do that again.”

Oh, don’t be such a wet blanket. I’ve handled your glowing problem, see?

And it had. Your skin is--nearly--the same gray it was before the wands had done their job and turned you. “It’s a little dark,” you say lightly.

Is it? Well I’m afraid the grimdark powers I deal in don’t go in much for shades. You’re lucky I didn’t make you obsidian.

You stand back up, and your knees don’t knock even a little. “That--that would have been ridiculous. I don’t molt for another sweep.”

I’ll keep that in mind. Now then, might I finish the proposition you were giving me?

“You don’t seem like the type of magic wands that would take ‘no’ for an answer, so go ahead.”

You take me out of this dreary place, and you return to whatever life it is you live. I will help you keep your unlife a secret so that you cannot be tied to the deaths of the gentlemen scattered piecemeal here on the floor. If for whatever reason our ruse is found out, I will aid in your escape to anywhere you so please. My only request is that if you come to find my company tiresome, you don’t do what my last wielder did and leave me someplace completely awful. Oh, and please don’t bother trying to destroy me. I’m pretty much indestructible, and any attempts will serve to only irritate me.

“Is that all?”

Do you accept the terms?

You shrug. Do you have much choice? “You wouldn’t be the kind of magic wand that can create new clothing, would you? Only it doesn’t seem very smart to walk home dressed like I spent a few hours running for my life in the chalk dunes only to fall down a flight of stairs and get my secondary digestive system blown out my torso pillar.”

No, but may I suggest a second alternative?

“Please.”

In that sarcophagus there is a body. The clothes it is wearing will be in excellent condition as they’ve been spun from godscloth. It might be a little short at the ankles, but it will do for now.

You stare at the wands, still scattered on the floor, behind you at the sarcophagus, and back at the wands. “Is that… you in there?”

What? No. When I refered to this hole as my ossuary I was kidding. That’s just some dead seer in there with an excessive fondness for the color orange.

“Why was a seer buried all the way out here? This temple has been abandoned for centuries.”

Don’t trolls have a thing about sunlight? It’ll be dawn soon.

An evasive pair of wands, you’ll give it that. “I was an exception to that even before you killed me.”

Tsk, won’t you let that go? That was so an hour ago.

You ignore it--her--again in favor of a little grunt work. You were of a decent physical prowess before your untimely demise, and already your supernatural strength is kicking in. The slab is moved easily, the bones (human, but you had suspected) stripped. The leggings are indeed short, but all in all the (alarmingly bright) outfit hasn’t suffered. The shoes are too small, but you take them anyway. You’ll have to burn your old gown.

Do you have a name?

“Does it matter?”

Well I’d prefer not calling you ‘Troll,’ ‘hey you,’ or ‘that broad what’s got no guts.’ I’m Rose.

“...Kanaya.”

A pretty name. Well come on now, let’s get you home before the angry mob arrives.

You pull the hood up over your head as best you can without any horn holes before picking the wands--Rose--up. “It’s nice to meet you, Rose.”

And you too, Kanaya.


End file.
